No abstract

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a complex neurodevelopmental disorder with deficiencies in many developmental milestones during the infantile childhood. Recent researches have shown that apart from behaviour problems, the ASD children also suffer from physiological conditions such as disturbed sleep and gastrointestinal problems that could be the contributing factors to their daytime behaviour problems. Lots of parents have expressed that, lack of sleep among the children have resulted in high levels of stress among the family members particularly among the immediate caretakers which are in most cases the mother of the child. Early behaviour intervention is a norm for ASD children which mainly affect the psychological level. Through this paper, an effort has been made to study the contributions made by yoga in order to mitigate such problems. Yoga is a non-invasive and alternative therapy that brings change in both physiological and psychological level of an individual. High levels of stress among the caretakers of these children could make them susceptible to non-communicable diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, arthritis etc. Parental based yoga intervention can be more effective for both children and parents and subsequently to the entire family.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a debilitating developmental disorder. Apart from behavior problems like communication and interaction, attention deficit, social behavior, adhering to sameness and repeated behavior, sensory integration, motor problems ASD children also suffer from a sleep disorder, gastrointestinal problem. Yoga is a non-invasive and alternative therapy which brings positive changes at both physiological and psychological level. We conducted this pilot study to test the feasibility of parent based structured yoga intervention for a large group of ASD children in special schools to reduce the severity of sleep, gastrointestinal and behavior problems. This was a pre-test and post-test single group design. A group of 7 ASD children between 5 and 16 years' age group, comprising 4 males and 3 females were selected from ATG (Assessment, Training, and Guidance) center. A set of 61 questionnaires were used to collect data from parents' pre and post yoga intervention. Two weeks' yoga intervention was given for 75 minutes everyday evening along with parents. As per the feedback from parent's significant changes have been seen among children in sleep and gastrointestinal problems in early days. It was concluded that with a longer period of intervention significant changes can be found with structured yoga intervention for a large group of ASD children involving parents in special schools. As per the parent's suggestion, teachers' involvement in such intervention will help to discipline the children during the intervention.